The Process:
All of our pine needle bales are
hand raked and tied. Our pine needles
are raked on land that we lease from the government and private
landowners.
Pine needle
baling is a lengthy process. In order
to keep all unwanted products (leaves, pine cones, trash) from entering into
the bales you must clean the tracts.
Cleaning of the tracts consist of spraying chemicals that rid this
unwanted products. This process can take
several days/weeks depending on the size of the tract and the condition that it
is in. Once the tracts are clean and
ready for raking a crew goes in and starts raking the pine needles into huge
mounds. After the mounds reach a certain
height and width the crew begin putting the needles into a box that forms the
needles into bales. Once the box is
packed full of needles one of the crew members hand ties the bales with twine. This type of needle is referred to as Box
Long Leaf. After several hundred of these
bales are made the crews begin loading them onto a dry box storage
trailer. A storage trailer depending on
the length can hold anywhere from 1064-1386 bales. Once the trailer is loaded, a tractor driver
will be transported to pick the trailer up and deliver it to its destination.
We sell our
pine needles to commercial and residential landscapers and homeowners. We deliver tractor trailer loads to
commercial landscapers for wholesale prices.
The trailer is dropped at the landscapers’ desired location. Once the landscaper has emptied the trailer
we bring them another load and bring the empty back to our drop yard where it
will eventually be loaded again for deliver.
Homeowner delivers are made with a ton truck and goose neck trailer. The needles are
pre-sold before going up the road for a delivery.
